Armor to protect our democracy

Like any good investigator, Robert Mueller is following the money. Recent reports suggest he is now investigating a slew of wealthy Russians and whether they illegally channeled money into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

For decades, the United States has enforced a strict ban on foreign nationals spending money on our elections. It’s our democracy, after all. Imagine if at the end of a campaign TV spot, the usual soothing voiceover were replaced by someone telling you the ad time was bought by a foreign government.

There’s something unsettling about that idea, and yet it’s precisely what took place during the last election. Except instead of broadcast ads, it was a string of deceptive, inflammatory ads purchased on platforms like Facebook. Our campaign finance laws, which haven’t been updated since 2002, say it’s illegal to hide who paid for a TV or radio ad that mentions a candidate. But no such rules apply online.

It’s time for that to change. Despite Facebook’s assurances last week that the company will start disclosing more information about its ad buyers, Congress needs to expand our campaign finance laws to ensure foreign powers cannot funnel money into our elections. The integrity of our democracy depends on it.

The problem is well-known but bears repeating. Troll farms with connections to the Russian government bought ads during the 2016 campaign meant to sow confusion and anger (some called for a “burka ban,” others encouraged Texans to secede). The ads were sloppy. Some were riddled with typos. But they spread like wildfire across platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

That’s because all it takes are a few shares and a few likes, and algorithms on platforms like Facebook kick into high gear, spreading deceptive messages to a huge audience in record time. At least 126 million Facebook users were exposed to content from Russian troll farms during the 2016 campaign; compare that to the 103 million Americans who watched the Super Bowl.

Not only do the ads spread fast, they’re incredibly cheap. On average, an ad that reaches 1,000 users costs a fraction of a cent. If you wanted to reach that many people in the New York City television market, you’d need to shell out at least $27. Our outdated campaign finance rules couldn’t fathom a day when advertising would become so effective, so cheap and so simple to deploy for nefarious ends.

Regulating the Wild West of online advertising doesn’t require much more than extending the basic rules we require for TV and radio ads. Expenditures for online ads that mention candidates aren’t recorded anywhere, nor do the ads ever suggest who paid for them (in fact, the Russian-sponsored ads in were deliberately designed to make users believe the ads were coming from Americans). We require such disclosures for broadcast ads, and those rules could easily extend to the web.

Television and radio broadcasters are required by law to maintain a database of any ad purchases that discuss political issues. It’s a common-sense solution that doesn’t prohibit speech but gives the audience (and savvy journalists) the ability to fact-check claims and hold sponsors accountable. Doing the same in the digital space should be a no-brainer.

It’s not out of line to ask that tech platforms — already pros at collecting and analyzing data — make reasonable efforts to ban foreign nationals from buying political commercials. They may not catch every illegal ad buy, but they should be held accountable for taking steps to make our elections less susceptible to foreign meddling.

These are among the proposals discussed in a new Brennan Center report. Congress could put them in place right now.

In fact, many of these recommendations are part of the Honest Ads Act, currently languishing on Capitol Hill. Facebook’s self-policing might make for good headlines, but it doesn’t change the fact that we still know too little about what happened in 2016 — and we need clear rules of the road to hold Facebook and their peer companies accountable to a higher standard. To be sure, these rules aren’t perfect — and bad actors will always look for new ways to penetrate our defenses. And in a constantly evolving landscape, ads are only one way foreign governments can exercise influence.

But it’s Congress’ duty at a minimum to put up some kind of defense to protect the electorate from foreign assault. As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg heads to the Hill this week, lawmakers would do well to avoid the theatrics — and focus on having a real discussion about obstructing the flow of poisonous foreign propaganda into our democracy.